Baseball in December

The USSSA baseball situation isn't ideal, but it's OK.

The main problems seem to be travel to far flung places to play three tournament games against teams that might be way too strong -- or way to weak -- for your team to get any good from the trip.

Tournaments are money-makers for the organizers, so they ram as many games as they can into a weekend. So, it's common for kids to start at 8 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. If there's a 30- or 40-minute drive involved, kids do what mine had to do a number of times and get up for a 5:30 a.m. drive to play baseball before most of the world's fully awake.

The smaller problems, like inconsistent umpiring, are part of every youth sports program.

One guy from the Tracy area who coaches a top-flight team for players 13-and-under contacted other guys who coach serious, organized teams. He pitched the idea of a league for kids 13-under.

Then, six or eight interested teams sent representatives to a meeting...they talked through a schedule, pitching rules, etc. And, the result ... there'll be a six-team league that allows each team to play 40 games from the spring to the end of July. Teams will play four-game series -- in a home-and-home set up. Games will start in the early afternoon. The bulk of the problems tournament play presents kids will disappear.

It took those guys a month, maximum, to start a league that merges the best of Little League (rivalries, balanced competition, etc.) and the best of USSSA travel baseball.

Why can't anybody start even a single team in Humboldt County without fearing reprisal or running into all sorts of hurdles?

I suspect that the biggest problem would be finding a place to practice. The folks who run the various fields like the way things have been for years. Little League's best, they figure, so they make it impossible for a USSSA team to get on their fields for practice. Forget that Little League's dying in most towns...the guys who run the fields like it because it fits in with how Humboldt County baseball works...er, doesn't work...it's hard to find anybody who thinks it serves the kids at any age group.

If some parent wanted to start a 13-under or 14-under team, they should do it now and secure the Eureka High baseball and softball fields. Then, they could make connections with the guys who run the league I mention and schedule just a few weekends of games...nothing that disrupts whatever's going on up there...just something that gets folks thinking that it's time to listen to what parents and players want -- even if it's not what the people who've been controlling thing for years prefer.

I'm aware that the attempt to get a travel team going late last summer hit a wall in Eureka because the folks starting it were told that USSSA killed Little League and, well, no USSSA team could use the nearest practice facilities.

And, after they screwed over the kids who were going to play and the people who'd done the work to make the team happen, they spent a good long time convincing themselves that they do it all...for the kids.

Yeah, right. If you run teams and maintain fields "for the kids," you do what's best for all the kids and all the parents...not for the few who've gotten on the inside and stayed there for so long.